Apostles of peace?

Readings of Romain Rolland and Henri Barbusse in the Buenos Aires press (1914 - 1919)

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the readings of Romain Rolland and Henri Barbusse in the Buenos Aires press in the period between the outbreak of the Great War and the months following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which constitutes the initial stage of a complex process of reception and cultural transfer of these authors that has been much less studied. For, unlike the unquestioned place that both intellectuals acquired in the culture of Buenos Aires in the inter-war period, as “educators and guides of youth” and “founding fathers of antifascism”, the readings of these figures during the First World War were characterized by a critical and negative tone regarding their pacifist proposals. In this context, an analysis of the articles and chronicles dedicated to Barbusse and Rolland in the Buenos Aires press reveals a set of alternative representations and senses to those that became stabilized in the years after 1919.